With Rozsival in, who is out now?

The addition of defenseman Michal Rozsival to the Chicago Blackhawks blue-line on Tuesday only comes as a surprise in relation to timing. With all eyes focused on the final week before a lockout occurs the Hawks are still “minding the store” by picking up their second player this offseason, and it just also happens to be their second defenseman.

He better provide something more, because at a reported $2 million for the his one-year deal, he’s not just a minor, depth type of pick-up. League sources say the New York Rangers were interested, but the Hawks outbid them by a wide margin.

Rozsival will play, which makes the deal worth analyzing that much more. Though he’s not the most self-motivated individual and it remains to be seen if he can stay healthy, he’s got some talent left if he applies himself. Either way, he more than likely starts as a No. 5 defenseman who will see penalty-killing time as a good shot blocker and perhaps a few minutes on the power play if there are injuries.

He has a decent shot, and that’s not exactly a strength of Hawks defensemen.

But this move adds to a crowded blue-line which means a veteran or even a younger player will probably be on the move, either to the minors or out of town completely. Rozsival joins holdovers Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Niklas Hjalmarsson, Nick Leddy, Johnny Oduya, Montador and Dylan Olsen on a team that also signed Brookbank in July. That’s nine players for six spots while, at most, two would be watching from the stands. So who goes?

The easy answer would be Olsen. He’s on a two-way contract and with the Hawks in an urgent situation to win, bringing along a young defenseman might not be a luxury they want to deal with. It’s known that Joel Quenneville likes Olsen but that might not matter. More on that in a moment.

Fuck the NHL and fuck the players. This is such nonsense. It wasn’t exactly a secret that there the CBA was going to expire. It is a slap in the face to us all that both parties are using a lockout as a bargaining tool. This is insane. Not only was there ample warning and negotiating time, but there have also been 3 lockouts to use as examples. This seems poised to ruin another season and hurt both side; and I hope it does hurt both side. The fans are helpless to act against this and obviously going to suffer. Fehr is an asshole that did this to the MLB fans and Bettman is an asshole that has done exactly this before. People keep asking fans who they side with, the NHL or the NHLPA, well I reject both answers, I side with the fans. Fuck this shit, greedy players and greedy owners can all go to the deepest hell.

I think I sit more with the players. I think they should settle for a 50/50 split cuz it looks like the cap would have gone up a bit this season anyway as it does every season. If a 50/50 split cannot be achieved than the only party that should be above 50 are the players, FUCK the owners!!!!

The players work hard for the money. Even last season when you split 57% between 700+ players and 43% between 30 owners, the owners still make wayyyyy more than the players. For the owners this is only an investment, any penny they make is a profit, you can lower the split from 90% to the players and 10% for the owners and the owners will still make a shit load of money. As long as the owners can still afford to invest then its a lifetime investment. For the players its not. The money that the players make will only be for the 10-20 years of their career, after retirement they need to have some of that money left over, but thats also why some of them have other investments.

and last but not least Bettman is a dick, this guy should be forced out of office. A 3rd lockout in 15 years???? that is unheard of, who has the authority to fire this guy???

1. Yeah the owners are completely contradicting themselves by handing out 100 million in contracts right before the CBA they claim to be horrible.

2. Bettman was ready to talk last year. Where was the NHLPA when he wanted to talk? I mean seriously we all knew this was going to happen expecting two men with ego’s that rival the sun for largest object in our solar system to come to an agreement in 3 months is just plain idiotic.

So really I am tired of hearing all of this #theplayers crap on twitter or even these “players support fans.” garbage because quite frankly no one supports us. If they were so damn supportive of us they would of hashed this out much sooner. The only people who truly lose is the fans and I feel sorry for the small fanbases in Phoenix and Columbus because if a full 365 days are lost you can almost guarantee those teams will be gone but hey who cares really I mean the average NHL player makes more a year then most Canadian households make in a lifetime so I guess a year on strike for them means they have to wait a year to afford that lovely beach house.

“The players work hard for the money. Even last season when you split 57% between 700+ players and 43% between 30 owners, the owners still make wayyyyy more than the players. For the owners this is only an investment, any penny they make is a profit, you can lower the split from 90% to the players and 10% for the owners and the owners will still make a shit load of money. As long as the owners can still afford to invest then its a lifetime investment. For the players its not. The money that the players make will only be for the 10-20 years of their career, after retirement they need to have some of that money left over, but thats also why some of them have other investments.”

Not to come at you, but I’m not so sure you have a good understanding on how it works. And I say that based on your ‘and the owners could take 10% and still make a shit load of money’

That and his argument that players only have 10-20 years to make a minimum of almost a million a year to survive on. Oh, poor them, the bottom paid player with a 5 year career will only make about 4 million, plus endorsements, plus a massive pension. How will they ever survive?

This thinking is absurd, both sides are clearly greedy as fuck. We can side with one or the other but to try and relate this to an average person in any way is absurd.

Also, I don’t think they work their buts off and deserve this kind of money. Seriously, would anyone here or anyone you know not trade their jobs, schedules, and pay grade for that of an NHL player. At the end of the day these are a bunch of jocks getting payed MILLIONS to play a fucking game. Having pity on them is absurd.

Allaire resigns as goalie coach. Apparently, the Leafs have 2 or 3 people making decisions on goalies. Its why he left as thats not what any team does.

If that is the case, and he didnt have full control of the goalies, and how they played and how they learned and so forth, well then it puts some perspective then on how and why the leafs goalies have struggled so badly. I mean this guy coached Giguere, coached Roy, he’s had so much success, he simply can’t just “lose it” so quickly.

sadly its another example of mismanagement within the leafs organization.

“”I didn’t feel like I could do my job last year,” Allaire told the National Post. “I wasn’t getting enough ice time. I wasn’t the only guy with [the goalies]. It’s not fair to the kids, not fair to me, not fair to anybody … I didn’t feel like I could work in this situation.””